Friday, May 09, 2008
Ex-Rockbridge coach turns Dinwiddie into recruiting destination
Terps' search for guard a revolving door
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.
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Coming clean on the Roanoke Times’ annual rating of the top 100 football prospects in Virginia, it appears that there was a top 99 this year – and not for the first time.
There were 100 players on the list but one of them, 92nd-rated Nick Watts, a 6-foot-3, 263-pound offensive lineman from Dinwiddie High School, is a junior.
Dinwiddie coach Billy Mills, once the head man at Rockbridge County High School, should be loaded this year “if we can up with a line,” he said Friday.
Mills said Virginia Tech assistant Jim Cavanaugh has said he will let him know Monday if the Hokies will offer Bradley Johnson, a 6-1, 215-pound outside linebacker and strong safety.
Johnson already has offers from Maryland, West Virginia, Duke, East Carolina and Richmond.
Mills said he has been in contact with UVa assistant Levern Belin but doesn’t know what the Cavaliers’ “deal” is with Johnson.
To this point, the Cavaliers have shown more interest in Dinwiddie’s Sam Haskins, a 6-5, 210 wide receiver, Mills said.
Dinwiddie quarterback Adam Morgan (6-0, 197) needs 3,000 yards in 2008 to become the state’s all-time leading passer but his height has been an issue with recruiters to this point.
Then, there’s Watts. Because of a miscommunication in an e-mail exchange, a Citadel-bound Dinwiddie wide receiver did not make a list of the top 100 seniors in the state, but Watts did.
In past years, the repetition of names or the omission of a number has resulted in anywhere from 99 to 101 players on the top 100.
SALEM’S PATRICK POLLIFRONE, named Timesland defensive player of the year by The Roanoke Times, has decided to attend Marshall but currently does not intend to play football for the Thundering Herd. Salem coach Steven Magenbauer says that Pollifrone, rated the No. 96 prospect in the state, may throw the discus for Marshall in track and field.
IN ADDITION TO SIGNING place-kicker Matt Blevins from Warwick High School in Newport News, Liberty University will be welcoming punter Matt Pennington from Atlee High School in Mechanicsville as a recruited walk-on. Blevins was rated the No. 85 prospect in Virginia by The Roanoke Times and Pennington was 98th.
JAMES RAINEY, a 6-2, 290-pound offensive lineman from Ocean Lakes in Virginia Beach, is headed to Old Dominion. Rainey, rated the No. 88 prospect in the state, is one of nine top 100 players headed to ODU, which begins play in 2009 as a Division I-AA independent.
After two seasons as an independent, ODU will undertake a full Colonial Athletic Association schedule. New Monarchs coach Bobby Wilder intends to bring 74 players to camp in the fall – 25 signees, 28 invited walk-ons and 23 survivors of campus tryouts. According to a piece by Rich Radford in the Virginian-Pilot, ODU has sold close to 10,000 tickets.
TYREE EVANS, who broke J.J. Redick’s Group AAA career scoring record and was named boys’ state player of the year in 2004 as a senior at George Wythe in Richmond, has made an oral commitment to the University of Maryland but the school is checking his criminal record before accepting him officially.
After his senior year at George Wythe, Evans spent a postgraduate year at Winchendon (Mass.) Academy before signing with the University of Cincinnati. He subsequently was indicted on charges of rape in a case involving a minor and never played for the Bearcats.
Evans eventually surfaced at Butler County (Kan.) Community College, then left after one season for Motlow (Tenn.) State Community College. Maryland AD Debbie Yow said she was unaware of Evans’ past before he was recruited by the Terps but coach Gary Williams has said he can serve as a mentor for Evans.
Earlier in its search for a guard, Maryland seemingly had landed Bobby Maze from Hutchinson (Md.) Community College but it seems there were academic issues with Maze, who originally is from Washington, D.C., but also attended a prep school in North Carolina.
Maze originally signed with Oklahoma, left Oklahoma and enrolled at Hutchinson, and then was headed for Maryland before problems developed and he signed with Tennessee.
THERE WASN’T MUCH response to last week’s Notebook Plus poll question, but 42 of the 55 respondents agreed with me – that they would put Pete Rose into the baseball hall of fame before either Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens.
More interesting to me was the voting in the poll that accompanied the final UVa Insider, which showed that 50.97 percent of the respondents (393 of 771) liked Mac McDonald as Voice of the Cavaliers, as opposed to 49.3 percent who apparently are in favor of a change.
Both the UVa Insider and the Virginia Tech Insider, which is handled by Randy King, will resume in August. Notebook Plus will continue through the summer except during vacation weeks.
